 Good afternoon everybody Welcome. Thank you for coming along. This is the session if this isn't what you're expecting Then feel free to wonder but if it is then for the next 45 minutes I'm going to talk about some of my experiences with teams healthy and otherwise and some of the things I've learned along the way It's also going to be some of the key slides retweeted by we are convivio. That's the Twitter Handle there. So if there's any points you particularly want to pick up on they could well be on there And then the video will be live on the Drupal com website at the end of the session within a couple of hours And this is part of the being human track I first of all want to just take a moment to congratulate the Drupal Association for having this track and to thank Emma Who ran this track so brilliantly? It's a really great addition to Drupal and a really good part of improving the culture that we have in the community and the companies and I want to talk a little bit about what I mean by healthy teams. I don't mean perfection That there just isn't any such thing in teams where you have a group of human beings Working together towards something. We are sadly all imperfect creatures Healthy teams are about recognizing that and replacing it instead with this kind of approach Instead of constantly expecting perfection what we expect from team members is listening understanding thinking forgiveness and learning This culture is really important But it's really hard Really hard. There's probably not one single person in this room including me who is perfect at that But let me let me remind you. It's not about perfection This is what we're working towards Now if this was a TED talk or I was a kind of top management consultant or something this would have a handy acronym Unfortunately, I'm not so the acronym is Lutful so remember that if you can but listening understanding thinking forgiveness and learning are what's key Now those are kind of the underlying principles But the steps towards healthy teams that we're going to work through today are these I'm going to have to go Pretty quickly as you can tell but we're going to talk about leadership. We're going to talk about purpose being real people self-managing Education problem solving pulse and momentum in a team and continuously improving These are some of the elements that make up the idea of healthy teams Let's start with leadership. This is how it used to be Very traditional company. You've got the leader at the top You've got some of the senior staff and they manage the teams and Instructions come down Reporting goes up and that works perfectly, doesn't it? You mean that doesn't work perfectly, of course it doesn't this was devised in the 1920s for Manufacturing where they developed this idea of the production line. It was revolutionary It was changing business people just needed to do repetitive tasks Same thing it again and again and products would roll out and all management had to do was sit at the top and perfect those bits the process and tell the low paid low skilled people down at the bottom do that do that do that do that Do that faster do more of that do that faster And that's all that needed to happen there and then they would monitor the statistics going up But the organizations that we run aren't production lines They're just not that kind of business The organizations that we run are creative teams What we hire people for are their skills and their experience Not their ability to constantly and rapidly repeat exactly the same thing minute to minute hour to hour day to day This management structure no longer works for creative teams And the pain we feel in this industry is in large part down to trying to force creative work into this management structure Instead management is more like this these days leadership and What that means is we've got this this is the organization or our team and I want to make clear Actually in win this session, but I'm not just talking about company leadership here. I'm talking about team leadership This could be on projects and the leadership isn't down to only one person all of the time And I'll come on to that in a moment But what you have here is the team or the organization as the one big circle And you've got the client on the outside who's coming along to this team and saying hey I've got problems can you help me with them and the whole team is providing the solutions back? Now who in an organization like this is? Closest to the client who knows most about what the client problem is and what the client's circumstances are It's the people on the perimeter the people doing the day-to-day work with clients who know the most And if we've hired smart people grown-up people Responsible people caring people Then we should just get out of their way and let them do what they need to do and That perimeter is the closest point to the client and we need to have as many decisions happening there as possible But on the other hand the organization needs some glue the organization needs to be held together This perimeter needs to be defined You know what is our organization and what isn't it? And that's part of the role of leadership But leadership is also there for coaching development support and so on So just like you have a client on the perimeter coming with problems and solutions You have the team here who may have questions and want answers or they may have feedback or ideas to change the organization And sometimes they request help from the leadership from the center of the organization. It's not the top. It's the center But other times because leadership isn't the job of any one person People need to move into that center and that can be anyone in the organization And that can be for a project basis. It can just be for a small task and What I'm going to talk about today is how whatever level you're at in your organization You have some power to change it even if you don't think you have Leadership is a mantle to be taken on by those who want to bring about change Be the change you want in your organization and your organization will steadily change Convince others around the perimeter and the organization will steadily change be the change that you want Take on some level of leadership. It can be a very small level, but it makes a real difference So once you have leadership you need purpose And that's one of the key jobs of the leader is helping the team define what the organization is and what its purpose is and One of the things that we've developed for building up our small little organization and team is This idea of a pyramid of purpose and it's the things that build up in the layers You don't have to have exactly this number on each level But it's roughly that you're probably more like to have values And I'm sure we've all in organization seen this kind of defining the values and how we're going to work together It's collaboration or whatever it is. Those will be specific to your organization Working up towards purpose on the top, but there's a couple of things I'm going to pick out here about how to define them And remember this applies not just to the whole organization, but also to project teams So think about this as something you could perhaps sit down on a big project and work through with clients all as one team Your team the clients team round one table Collaborating on defining this and then reviewing it every few sprints. How are we doing on this? Now the values are the way the organization behaves and the team members within it behave the motivations are And I think it's important to get to the underlying thing of why we're doing this So the values of the way we behave the motivation is why we're doing this and when we were defining our little organization This is what we came up with for the four motivations These were the things why we were going to go to work every day Why we were going to do the projects we were doing? And we can sense check ourselves against this on a regular basis to see how we are doing in this direction But understanding that motivation is key and also surfacing it because if you don't have this conversation You end up with people in the organization with different motivations If when you're bringing people together you have this discussion You will find that someone says oh actually I don't want that I just want to get paid go home watch telly or I just want to I'm only earning money to save up So I can do a round-the-world trip or whatever it is. So it's a it's worth having this conversation Really important So these are the motivations why we're doing what we're doing Then you build up to the focus now you may ask at first. How can you have three focuses? But focus is a triangulation because successful organizations have such a key focus on what it is That they are going to do that it can be so precisely specified by triangulation points So by focusing on this and that and that this is where we're aiming Sometimes this bit is really difficult to describe. It's really difficult to capture But if you can think of three things to focus in on one might be a sector that you're going to work in One might be a way in which you're going to work one might be a technology or an approach to work So those three things can really help you find that center point So bringing it back together you end up with this pyramid building up and then your ambitions So if these are our focuses and this is the way we'll behave and this is why we're doing it What are our big ambitions and there are two here because it's good to have an external ambition and an internal ambition So, you know, how do we want to change the outside world? How do we want to improve things there and what are we going to do there? What's our big ambition and it could could be something massive or it could be something achievable in the next few years and Internally, what's our ambition for our organization for our team or for our project team? What are the ambitions there and then those mount up so that on top you have this core purpose What is the one thing that your organization can be the best in the world? and really really focused on and for your projects Why are you doing this? What is the big? overriding purpose It's really important to have that discussion. This is how we did it for ours Small print, but the slides will be up later on and you can see just how we built up from the bottom And we're actually leaving the top two for now because we're going through a full branding exercise and those we wanted to define Through a process of evolution. We didn't want to just sit in a meeting room and say Yeah, that's what they're going to be. We want to discover them through conversations with clients and so on So that's what we've defined there So that's purpose So you have leadership you have purpose The next you need to allow people to be real people and That in so many organizations is very difficult Particularly if you're in a very large corporate and you're a small project team It can be very difficult to get your team to be real or for you yourself to be real and What does it mean? I mean first of all you've got to be open and frank You've got to be able to raise those problems things that you're unhappy about things you think are wrong You've got to just say what's on your mind. You've also got to be free to be weird I think that's an important part particularly in creative teams It's okay to be a bit weird. It's okay to express yourself and be a bit random And if you look around some healthy organizations, you find some really weird people and they're great. I like the weird people Hopefully they like me being weird too, but it doesn't always and so you then need to get to know each other properly I'll talk a bit more about this in a moment But it's not enough just to you know when you bring a team together or an organization together or recruit someone onto a Team just go. Oh, hi. Yeah, this is Frank. This is Sue tease over there Kitchens there etc etc. That's not enough. You need to get to know each other properly Then you need to appreciate the differences and those differences are vital because a team is You know really is the sum of its parts and you want as many Differences brought to the team as possible diversity is so important and within that equality is good Sameness is bad quality does not equal sameness Okay, equality cause everyone being treated fairly everyone having equal opportunities You should not try and force everyone to be exactly the same And that's not just in terms of their skill set or their clothes or whatever it is It's in terms of the way they express themselves the things that make them happy and unhappy You have to allow that to come through and value that for what it brings to the team Then sharing thoughts and feelings. I know soft stuff, but it's Drupal con It's the being human track. This is vital and too often in the tech industry It's like no just got to get it done. Don't talk about how you feel. Whatever it is Just got to get it done And actually what you can surface here is some really important stuff here when people are feeling a bit unhappy about something It's often a precursor to a bigger problem. That's coming down the line Different people have different gut feels different radars And if they're a bit unhappy if they want to share that that can be really important The success of the project and the success of the organization I remember this thing we talked about the start the culture of listening understanding thinking Forgiveness and learning practice what you preach take that back to your team and just think all the time How can I listen more to what's going on in the team? How can I make sure that I'm understanding different people's viewpoints? How can I I'm gonna take myself away and have some quiet time to think and reflect on that maybe read around it or Try and understand it more and then forgiveness because remember that thing there is no perfection So there'll be times you get really wound up with someone on your team. That is Normal sameness bad And it's it's going it's natural to get annoyed So what you do is you express that and you look for ways that you can come to a forgiveness of each other And make that work and then all the time what can you learn? What can you improve in your team and in the organization? So I want to talk a little bit more about getting to know each other properly and in our team when we first got together One of the first things we did Was to just pair up and have a conversation about what kind of person we are what mattered to us what we liked What we didn't and then we drew each other This is me So I have a beard a small beard. I like to write have the pen and paper and I'm not a morning person So I'm in my dressing gown So that was a brief expression, but it was just a fun way of getting the conversation going But it was the precursor to doing something a little bit more which was a bit of a map of what are our work skills and this is someone else in the team prepared mine and Talking amongst themselves. It's well. What is what's he good at? What's he not so good at how we're going to do use those skills within the team and that's a starting point Just mapping out what are people's strengths and weaknesses and so on what are they good at and what are their specialisms? But I want to take that a bit further And we haven't done it yet But I want to take it further in something called personal mapping and if you Google you can find out lots of other people's personal maps It's a common thing, but it's essentially like a mind map where you get to know somebody through Talking with them and mapping out a mind map of what they're like So, you know talk about their life dreams and goals talk about their work skills interests and goals talk about their leisure and personal interests You know who knows some new recruit comes in and you show them the existing teams Personal maps and get them to map out theirs is one of the first tasks. You go. Oh, right. You like so and so too Are we like this? Why didn't you come and join in with that and you just instantly help people become a more cohesive team What do they love and hate? What's their style of working? You know, there's all sorts of little weird niggles that people have about I hate it when people do this or I love it When people do that and what more can you think of so maybe with your team? One of the takeaways is to go back and think about doing this kind of personal map How could you express yourself and make it so that people can get to know each other? Through talking about their interests and what motivates them and so on because it all adds up towards allowing people to be Real people and that is really important So you got leadership you've got purpose You've got real people on the team who you're allowing to be real people Then you need to set them a bit freer and it's self managing. That's the name of the game Now this is so important because you've hired these smart people You've hired creative people You've hired adults. I presume, you know, but um The thing is then why do you put so much micromanagement in an organization? Why do you tie their hands with so many rules and forms and whatever else? Why do you make them get permission for even the tiniest of things? set them free Create a culture of self managing and what you'll find is an organization that takes Responsibility team members that take responsibility for supporting each other for looking after each other and it bonds a team together So tightly that they can weather even the largest of problems because they are addressing them together Now how do you do this? Well, first of all, you plan everything together There's not the concept of the leader going and sitting in a darkened room and going right What am I going to tell everyone to do? That just doesn't work. You plan together and you plan very openly Transparency of key information is important because if you're going to expect people to make decisions Like about when they're going to take holiday how much holiday they're going to take what expenses They're going to spend on what conferences to go to what they're going to buy for the team What they're going to buy for the client what they're going to do Etc. Then they need to have the information at their fingertips that you would have as a leader if you were making the same decision That means Opening up the finances the team should know what's going on. How can you make some kind of dashboard available? Means opening up other key data Pipeline things like that. What can you open up about to make your organization very transparent radically transparent? Because that will also bind the team together Then this is often the most difficult one making problems very visible and solving them together It's a very human thing when something's going wrong or There's some kind of big stress in the organization to kind of put it under the carpet and go well I'm sure it'll be right in a month or two. I don't want to just have to raise it and have a big Conversation and all that sort of thing. I bet it just grows that way You have to make problems visible amongst the team and solve them together because you have the power of these multiple brains and Different backgrounds different experiences and you can make the most of that in your organization if you allow it to be free and the team solve problems together and then Put you know take all the decisions that a manager of making an organization How can you make those decisions by peer review instead? Why do you need to manage your ways? Why do you have to wait for someone to be available to get permission for this that or the other? So one of the really powerful things to do is say look for something. That's a really small expense. Just sort it out yourself. It's fine It's absolutely fine. You know just sort it out, but for something bigger talk to any sensible colleague Any sensible colleague and if they approve then that's it because as long as they know the key information They can make key decisions and They have to have that available to them. So peer review is something we find works really well That's also partnered with the buddy system for support and growth. So whenever any anyone joins We buddy them together with somebody and they then Take time on a regular basis every couple of weeks to just talk stuff over How are things going? What have you been working on? What have you learned this week? What's a problem that you're facing and a regular basis and if something comes up? They can talk about it then one-on-one and it's just a very safe place where you can just vent if you need to or Boast if you want to and just have someone who understands you and has worked with you for a while and can make it happen Then another important thing is working out loud If you're going to be a self-managing team Everybody needs to know what everyone else is doing because otherwise you're in the dark So everyone all the time whenever they're starting on you know Do doing a particular feature or issue or something in a meeting whatever? Just be chatting about it in the chat channel Just have one place where people know they can go and find out whatever is going on in the organization Work out loud say what you're working on say when you finish say what's going well and just the maximum communication possible Micro-management kills self-management and teams and So many agencies have got into this Overdoing time tracking and it's a whole different subject, but really agencies shouldn't be selling by the hour these days It's just not a productive way of working, but so many of them have these incredibly Over-the-top time tracking systems where it's in six-minute blocks or it's this or it's 15-minute blocks And you've got all these categories you've got to choose from and so on and it drives people nuts It's it really drives people nuts how can you free them up from that and Still have that relationship with clients and be selling by the days or be selling the value or by the sprints or whatever and Release people from this time tracking burden So that's self-managing and communications is the next thing and I mentioned it briefly there but it's Really really key to consider communications actively Too often in organizations. They kind of happen passively You know, it's just oh, yeah that meeting happen and this will happen and blah blah blah and you don't really think through What your communications are at all and have the principles and you don't make the most of them I know it's all too easy And so in person on on the wall is a really key thing if you are going to get together and this is vital Even for distributed teams. We're a distributed team But we get together for a whole day every two weeks and we just co-work together Sometimes we have a workshop session together whatever it is, but every two weeks. We're together if you're in the same office It's even easier, but you have these kind of sessions where either you're doing a retrospective Or you're doing a planning for the next quarter or whatever it is Do it on the wall make it very visual make it active have people moving around And as well as being very visual for in-person meetings have some core principles What are? Your core principles for meetings You know, are they defined do people know what to do? For us it's things like showing up on time is late Because if you should meetings at four you show up at four then you've got a bit of time getting a laptop open Etc. Etc. Show up in time for the meeting to start at four You can get all the chit-chat out of the way first have a coffee, etc On time is late Then also every meeting has to have someone who's leading it even if it's you know, just a team thing Someone is leading the meeting making sure that there's a structure making sure there's a time box Making sure the meeting is productive Make sure different people are getting their chance for their voices and there's other meeting culture things as well Meeting principles, but what would yours be perhaps you as a team could define What your meeting principles are how are you going to make meetings better for everybody? Because all too often in agencies. I hear people say I've got to go to another meeting. Oh meetings I'll tell you something in the creative industries Meetings are one of the things we do because they're a key form of communication If you heard your surgeon say I've got to go to the bloody operating theater again Oh God Then you'd be a bit worried what we do is meetings. We meet with clients. We meet with each other That's where we catch up on information. That's where we share things. That's where we make key decisions and we plan Meetings are key to what we do not an annoyance that gets in the way. So make them work In terms of other forms of communication that we've covered in person also virtual meetings Has anyone ever had that Google Hangouts thing of your microphone's not working. Can you hear me? Do you know I can't hear you still try another browser? Everyone has that Skype or hangouts or whatever it is So have the same principles start early get that figured out have everyone have the same headset or Speaker or something like that. What are the things that you can do that will just make virtual meetings work better for you I've even done things where I take an iPad along to a meeting where one person is going to be on a virtual meeting and Put them at the end of the table in an actual place So that people turn speak to them and they can have a person's eye view of the meeting And just think what can you do to make a virtual meeting more productive as well? One of the things we do is because we're a distributed team we put more effort into this But you can do the same in an office too is the tea break culture Maybe it's just an English thing, but we like tea breaks You know, it's good to have a cup of tea and a biscuit and it's a great chance just to Relax with your team relax with your colleagues catch up talk about other stuff And that's where serendipity happens when you've got a couple of people get together and have a cup of tea So we're distributed so or free range as we call it actually It's and we just say in the chat channel. Hey, I'm gonna put the kettle on Does anyone fancy a tea break in five minutes and we just get on for the length of our cup of tea Have a chat and a catch-up and it really helps that team spirit really helps bonding together and On that note chat channels whether it's you know slack hip chat skype whatever you used chat to others Think about how you do it. How can you make it more effective? What are the principles that you're going to do there because having a healthy team that constant day-to-day? Communication is key to it and so do it consciously Mindfully rather than just doing our randomly whatever I feel like Key one for us is eating together We're a company that's all about kind of good food good times getting around a table together But actually it's really important for human beings generally particularly when you're celebrating something or there's a big milestone Whatever it is get together whether it's just lunch or dinner and hey tech industry We could try something other than pizza Revolutionary you know get imaginative and do something nice I've had you know team round to mind cooked dinner that kind of thing So do whatever it is that works for your company and your culture, but get together share a meal talk about stuff And that leads on to this final one appreciating and celebrating It's not just enough to just do the same thing day in day out and you know just on to the next on to the next on to the next You have to take that time to stop Recognize what people are doing appreciate it and actually thank them One of the things that my colleague Joe Baker came up with is you know what these days all that comes through the postbox is bills Wouldn't it be nice every now and then just to get a thank-you card or something? So one of the things that we've started doing ad hoc as no sort of schedule is just when something good happens Just get a card send a card and say thanks And you know how nice it is in the morning to pick that up for the doormat and just go oh Someone actually went to one of those old thoughts old-style postboxes It's better than an email and just think of what you can do for appreciation and celebration So you've got all of those elements leading towards problem-solving Spoiler alert there will always be problems. Remember that thing. I said at the beginning. There's no perfection. There really isn't Even in a team that's worked together well for a long time Problems will come up problems will come up day to day. That is what we do. We are problem solvers So we need to do it within our own teams as well as for the clients. So if there are going to be always problems Why do we tend to wait until they come up and then just randomly go? Oh and generally when it's too late Oh god, we've got to do something about it must have a meeting What you should be thinking about is how can we actively seek out those problems at an early stage? And what are we going to have as a framework for dealing with them? So these are the seven steps and First of all you have to actively gather problems It's not just enough to wait until something comes up as a big problem You have to actually actively gather it And that means perhaps you have regular meetings Maybe you're having retrospectives and you're gathering problems that come up there Maybe you have in your weekly team meeting what problems have we encountered this week and raise those Maybe it comes out of the buddy system and this isn't just problems in the way the team works It can be really small things like you know, we need a better way of You know holding this kind of meeting or you know We find that it's really difficult to get this client to do retrospectives or whatever it is Raise it as a problem then you study it you look into it Well, what might be the root causes of this you dig down into it then you generate multiple ideas Well, how could we address those root causes you select a couple of ideas that look likely you test them You then review those tests and what's worked you adopt as your standard practice across the organization So if you think about this, that's just the agile process, isn't it? You're just working through you're looking at what's going on your planning your testing stuff out You're prototyping and you're learning and then you're adopting it and deploying it to production So that's all part of building towards a pulse and a momentum in the organization Because it's not enough just to have that cycle of projects you also feel that you need to build somewhere And I don't know if you've ever felt in your agency that it just feels like it's that relentless Oh, we've finished this project for this client now We've got to go into this project for this client now. We've got to go into this project for this client But how is the organization developing? How is the team? Developing through that it feels Relentless it feels like you're on a treadmill and you know, where is the end in sight? So if you can have a pulse to your business and that feeling of momentum It can feel like your organization is making more progress and maybe it already is but people just don't recognize But that pulse so one of the things that we take as an approach is we work on a quarterly basis and at the beginning of each Quarter we define what our big rocks are Now as anyone I've seen the talk by Stephen Covey about where he puts different rocks in a jar Don't know if anyone has but what he does he takes a couple of two jars and he's got a pile of big rocks Pile of smaller rocks and a pile of gravel What he shows is that if you start with the gravel all the little small jobs that need doing all the little Bits and pieces and you put that gravel in the jar and then you take the medium-sized rocks and then you put them in the Jar Then you come to put the bigger rocks in and there isn't room Because you know it's all kind of packed compacted together But if you start with the big rocks put those in they all fit in the medium-sized rocks They all fit in and they fall among the big rocks and then the gravel and it pours in amongst all the cracks All the little jobs fit in amongst everything else So if you don't take those big rocks and put them into your planning first For your team or your organization, then they don't happen. They don't get done You don't get that feeling of forward motion of momentum So we start each quarter with the big rocks. What are the you know, we tend to have about three things What are the three things that must happen this quarter to make us feel that our business has momentum and And we make sure those are done in the quarter and we have a monthly review of all of those What actions have been done towards them? What need to be done? What can we schedule in? So that is the pulse It's the quarterly to monthly and then that falls down to a weekly thing We have management Mondays where a couple of us get together and just work through all the smaller tasks So it's big rocks smaller rocks gravel you work through that pulse. What is your organizational pulse? What keeps things ticking? What is that momentum that you can build up to go forward because if a team feels that it has that momentum? It feels like it can do Anything and that is a key thing of a healthy team that feeling of wow together. We can do anything We can overcome any problem and that comes from that feeling of momentum and then that follows on to Continuously improving now you'll know about this from the agile process And I'm sure many of us do it on projects. You have that retrospective Every couple of sprints or maybe you know, maybe if you're good every sprint so many projects don't know and very few agencies do them for themselves When was the last time you've got everybody together and you just did a complete retrospective of how of the last three months gone? What problems have we had? What can we learn from them? When was that time and if it wasn't recently when could you shed let's schedule it for again? Because just like an agile process you want to continually learn from everybody and have everybody feeding in Ideas for improvement feeding in problems that came up and continuously improving the organization Now on this I'd really recommend a book. It's by the founder of Pixar And in it he just it's called creativity ink and in it he describes their notes process in the creative industry There's a lot of delicate people which of course in tech were much much tougher as an industry, aren't we? Okay in work, there's a lot of delicate people all of us are delicate to some degree and so giving feedback and Asking people to improve is tough. It is really tough So Pixar have developed their notes process and principles and if you Google that you can find out a bit more as well But they have a notes day on a regular basis where they get together and do that not just for the films But for the way the organization runs and Having a notes day or a notes afternoon or whatever you can do will really help to continuously improve your organization So these are some of the key points that we've considered there Leadership purpose allowing people to be real people Self-managing set people free communication constantly Problem-solving expect the problems welcome the problems because they are your chance to improve pulse and momentum and then continuously improving I Mentioned earlier this concept of if you want to change the organization Be the change That's really important because there'll be people in this room who aren't the CEO of the organization or aren't the leader of their team But that doesn't mean that you can't bring about change in your team in your organization and steer it towards a healthier approach Everybody in the organization as we discussed here Can move to the center at some point even if they put that hat on themselves quietly and never say I am now a leader They could just get people together for a meet-up What if you started getting people together for a you know better project teams meet up and sharing Experiences and you started filtering out these ideas and other ideas to your organization just through a peer group meet-up It's not you know big serious thing But it's a demonstration of leadership to organize that and bring those people together and seed those ideas in the organization What are the things that you could do in order to make that happen within your team? So step to the center and take on some leadership mantle There's a couple of points. I want to make in general about organizations that lead to unhealthy culture Our people are our greatest asset You hear that said don't you? Big companies the chief executive will go to a conference and he'll stand at the front and And you know he'll be making announcements about the quarter and that's the thing Yes, I I want to make clear that our people are our greatest asset And I mean I just hate that assets are stuff that have bought and sold their things You know, it's just terrible. You can't do that We are creative organizations that come together and work and we have to realize that this is the way things are now Our organizational team is simply us all of us Choosing to work together for a shared purpose Now we covered this thing of shared purpose I'm a little earlier on but it is absolutely key the there has to be alignment if you go one person saying I want a fancy new house and that's all I care about and other people saying we want to build an organization We want to be part of for a long time Things fail things fall down. You have to get people together for that shared purpose and The choosing word is really important here, too because it's something we have to come to terms with in our industry is That good talent Can move anywhere at the drop of a hat People are choosing to work together And if you don't consider them in what you're doing in your organization If you don't put them at the heart of decisions if you don't work openly transparently collaboratively with them They will choose to do something else and they can That perimeter that I showed around the organization that circle That is not a wall That is not hard solid line It's not a line that cannot be crossed It's a dotted line. It's temporary You've brought people together like magnetism to work on something that they believe in in a way that they believe in They can choose to be there and you can appreciate that or not And if you don't that circle changes shape and teams move elsewhere So that's really important that choosing word and that shared purpose word are absolutely key So in wrapping up what I want to say is there are sprints on Friday and There's a lot of things there that are code traditionally But it's not all code and if we're going to build this kind of shared purpose and healthy teams We ain't need to understand what's going on amongst all teams But we need people there who are interested in the way that teams work and working on those kind of issues How can we bring together people together around stuff? How can we manage core contributions better or module development? So even if you're not a coder there will be things that you can do at these sprints and it's really important to go to those the other thing to mention is There's feedback on the sessions We want to know what you think of all of the sessions you go to it's really important for the Drupal Association to know What to schedule in future years and as this is the first year of this track the being human track We really want to know what do you think of the sessions on this? Is this a useful track? Are you learning things to take away? And if you want to follow us on Twitter We're blogging about a lot of this as well as we have our journey from very small startup We're blogging very transparent in opening and sharing a lot of these tools And I'll share some of these notes and slides as well. So feel free to follow or the blog or on Twitter Now it is half past four. There's 15 minutes left of the session. We have an audience Q&A Mike I can't promise great answers to every question But we can have a discussion and we can see who has the great answers in the room because that's one of the key things That's center person doesn't have all the answers They just create the right structure the right place for the the magic to happen That's the key part of their job So consider me at the center of that circle for now creating the right space not providing all the answers So we have time some questions if you'd like to line up on this microphone here If you have questions you'd like to ask please feel free and we can put them out to the room No, I see Regarding openness and transparency. What's your opinion about sharing wages? What the staff earns and and how much people should should increase on a yearly base or Decisions on that doing together with the staff. What's your opinion about that? That's a great question because it comes down to real deep-seated cultural issues a lot of the time And also different laws in different countries about opening up that data We've chosen to be very open with it and you know my team members know what I'm paid and what each other's paid And we like that openness But we're a relatively small team How it works when you scale up is a more difficult question. I've seen salary certainly be a divisive issue before When it wasn't opened up at the right times So yeah, it can be I think with everything if you try and put a lid on things You know, what's the reason we don't want people to know what what people are paid If your CEO has been paid something that he doesn't want the rest of the company to know about There should probably be alarm bells ringing there But how do you do that because then how do you explain what the journey is up through pay? And one of the things we've really got to solve in our industry is how do you have career progression in very flat Organizations and so you've got to find other ways for people to be earning more and that's through their professional development So they can move on to higher day rates. That's through more specialism through supporting teams in their specialism But very often It's not about moving into management positions or leadership positions because they're not the right people for those all the time So how do you I think it's good to open it up because it then has forces that conversation about how we going to Ensure people's professional development takes them up that pay scale Without cramming them into jobs that they don't want to do and might not be right for If you want to read more widely about this buffer is famous for having blogged about this very openly You know buffer the Twitter sharing app their blog is great If you search for buffer open salaries or something You'll find their blog post and they share everything and what they they have is a formula for the way that salaries are calculated So that it's very open and egalitarian for calculating the stuff But maybe you know you could take first step create that formula which is based on you know We will look at market salaries and we'll wait based on experience and we'll wait based on day rate and so on That can be a key thing One of the key things I talked about sometime is the rule of thirds It's like in restaurants When you buy a meal a third of what you pay for the food goes on actual ingredients a Third is on the people that prepare it and bring it to your table and a third towards goes towards general overheads and profit So that rule of thirds is in the restaurant trade and it's a very you know well known thing But in our industry again You know it's roughly about a third that will go on the salaries a third of people's day rates goes on salaries A third goes into the organization in professional development and all the tools and so on and a third to other overheads and Profit so yeah, you can open up a formula and then maybe that could be a step towards opening up more widely But I tend to be in favor of being pretty open about it Okay, next question Hi, it sounds good with The healthy and diverse team, but doesn't it mean that you have to Say no to talent that you That you can't bring on to the team if you want to maintain the health and you want to maintain the culture even though You're talking about diversity. I mean there's a clash or Yeah, there can be because talent isn't just about what you can do at the keyboard With code or design or report writing or sales pitch writing or whatever Talent is kind of a deeper thing also encompasses your communication skills your ability to work in teams with others and so on and You have to recognize and bring on individuals that are right for that culture in your team And if they're not then you have to have that conversation and it may be that they leave themselves It may be that you have that conversation and you work out ways that they can try and fit in and if not Move them out of the organization. But yeah, you will sometimes have to say no to talent I've had to do it really talented people who perhaps were very very lacking on the communication side And we primarily hire for communication skills. There isn't a member of our team I wouldn't put solo in a meeting with this CEO of an enormous client That's so important to us because that ability to communicate with each other with clients and so on is Makes a real difference. So, yeah You you have to find what is our kind of person, but that is not about their Genetic characteristics or anything. It's not about their background or any of that It's about their skills and they're fit with the culture So you choose on fit with the culture and everybody has an equal opportunity to try and fit him in that culture But okay next question. Would you care to come through to the mic because it's good it's being recorded and Is going to be put out later on so we've been asked to bring everyone up to this mic Well, I could go around Jerry Springer style. I mean that kind of appealed If you don't track times, how do you then see if a project runs over budget? Okay, so If you're using agile then you're working in sprints and you know at the end of each sprint Well, I'd get a different client Unless it's a very small project I mean there are certain small budget projects that it's fine not to use agile file But for larger projects, I mean the UK government published a report yesterday one of their government agencies Has adopted agile and in the last two years have delivered something like I'm trying off the top of my head to think I think it's my eight successful live projects and the previous ten years. They're delivered to that had succeeded And you know, they've just seen this change momentum and transparency and visibility And it doesn't this have to be about all about just scrum Let's not get religious about it, but it's agile principles about openness transparency Collaboration regular, you know check-ins regular planning rather than big planning big delivery big ah Which tended to tip five projects before Okay, but like could you like say an example? You know, I imagine you have a team of five people they all work remote You don't know what they're doing or we have what you see in the sprint board or whatever, right? Yeah, sure You don't know if they spend now four hours on it or eight hours on it and you know And how what is and billing in the end if you want to send a bill you need to somehow say okay We spent X hours on your project and here's your bill So what we do is we work in sprints and people are booked on to sprints when a project's starting It might be sort of 10 two-week sprints or something for a team of five And at the beginning of that project you're agreeing the teams and their presence and so on and at the end of each sprint All it is is person days And so it's a much Looser way if you've got a very short project hourly is probably going to be what you have to do But for anything bigger we encourage this move towards sprint thinking And at the very least person days and all that matters is someone was booked on something It's you know, it's not something where the client suddenly says. Oh, yeah. Yeah marketing department Haven't got the brand guidelines yet. You'll have to send your design guy home That guy's booked and needs to be booked on something else, you know, or you know, the API documentation is ready Your developer have to go home and she can come back tomorrow That doesn't work. You can't do that kind of thing because you have a team approach so that kind of Agile process that kind of sprint base really helps you get out of that hourly culture which is punishing for everybody and doesn't deliver real value and you monitor progress instead through the delivery of story points And in fact, there's even a culture. There's a really interesting thread if you look up hash no estimates and Google it as well There's a site that supports the hashtag and there's a really interesting culture round It's a waste of time to estimate at all because you know, it's always wrong, isn't it because we're doing really complex stuff It's almost impossible to know the solution at the beginning the entire solution and how long it'll take So recognize that and just try and get things to roughly the same size and study the number of things that go through the system But if otherwise if they're different size stories You can do rough story pointing and you can then look at the velocity that you deliver through a project And that helps get that team away from that curse of micromanagement and time-tracking. Okay, next question Just one of the if you've got any sort of thoughts or advice for we're a very small company for people. We've just gone distributed and It's working pretty well with the communications or you know Is kind of working well and everything and we're all generally fairly pleased with it one Sort of issue. I'm looking to the future is taking on new members of staff Now we're not we're not a particularly wealthy company. So, you know, we're not gonna be we're not gonna be in a position to sort of hire Venues or anything. So if I was to take on an experienced member of staff I don't think that would be too much of a problem because they might work distributed before, you know You might have a couple face-to-face meetings with them in a cafe and then they're away they go but what about somebody inexperienced or a junior or Are there any anything that I could possibly do? It's a challenge that all distributed teams face In fact, it's even a problem in other organizations because you know, even if you're in the same office people are busy They've got their own jobs to do so bringing in junior staff is something that's often done Very badly in our industry. It's kind of like, oh, here's your induction day. Good. Do this. Good. Do that You know, here's an email and go to lunch with them done That kind of thing and we really need to look at better on boarding for particularly junior staff But if you doing that in a distributed environment, I think the face-to-face time is so valuable to those who are new And young in the industry and so it could be a question of just pairing them up with someone who lives not too far away And maybe that pair could meet up in a cafe two days a week for the first few weeks What can you do there? And also, you know, maybe a few of you could meet up once a month or something and just support them through that And otherwise the next best fallback is have someone just have a daily 15-minute hangout with them How you're doing what you're doing there and checking in with them on chat regularly You just need to be very present very active. So they're not sitting there at home going Nobody's talking to me. What do I do next? I don't want to make a fool of myself by saying something in the chat Oh, what do I do? So you've got to really support them through it because they it will be very stressful for them So do it remotely or in person however you can but do it very mindfully think of what are they thinking now? What might they be worrying about? How can we help them through that? There's no perfect answer. I'm afraid remember that slide with perfection cross out. There you go Thanks for a great session We're a Norwegian company with eight eight nine people and we're looking to grow to the double size within the two three couple of years Could you just elaborate on? Where you were when you started this process and where you're now and where you're going in terms of scaling and how you're gonna Do that? Sure. Yeah, we're pretty young company and would come out of a very difficult situation for the team You know had gone off in different, you know Come from all sorts different directions but decided to link up and So we started and on day one we blogged so you can look at our blog and just think what we were thinking day one And we wrote about that kind of stuff and we're sharing weekly throughout throughout the process So we've got to the stage now where there's seven of us And we work together regularly We're on you know, few of us on different projects and so on so we have to work to actively keep that Cohesion even on such a small team when it's distributed and we're growing not going for huge growth What we're doing is partnering with other agencies to deliver larger projects and the bit that we specialize in is the kind of the Consultancy and the project guidance through a process sort of a program management approach And we support a small team of other agencies to deliver very big projects like that by providing that wrapper That allows them to work with enterprise clients And we're very selective about those partners that we take on so we know they can deliver those projects So we'd rather than growing really big what we're seeking to do is get the best in the industry So rather than be a supermarket we're a group of local independent traders who are owner managed a passionate about what they do have well Trained well supported staff and so on and that's kind of a different approach that we're taking now But yeah, that growth is hard. You'll find that getting into double digits is a really tough phase And then the next thing you'll hit is somewhere around about 30 and we've said We probably don't want to grow beyond about 25 30 people because that's them You know, that makes it easy to just get together regularly and to do things regularly and you know Growing when you're at that level and if you decide not to grow beyond that what you do is you look for the higher value Projects you look for the better clients you get more selective and you put some limit on the organization That's a good thing from agile as well. You've got the concept in Kanban and so on of this work in progress limit And that's really really helpful in delivering projects It's also really really helpful in delivering successful organizations You look for the highest value thing to do all the time the best client to work with you Don't just take on every project you can get to grow bigger And I think it's important to be to think about what direction do you want to go? Do you want to be really big or do you want to be kind of owner managed a real team feeling and consider what the culture is? that you want to maintain But always I favor higher value go for the higher day rates go for the projects that are more fun more exciting Be selective reject most RFPs one of my colleagues yesterday One of our overheard at convivio things was these RFPs were going to need to get a bigger bin Because we're really selective and there's some really bad RFPs out there that we get sent and so on so You've just got when you're small you can afford to be really selective and just take on things that are absolute Remember the three points of focus once you've got that figured out You know you can reject anything that isn't at the triangulation of those and that will define your organization saying no Will define what your team is like and what your organization is like that know is very very powerful Okay, thank you very much for the question. We have reached the end of our time slot. So I'd just like to say thank you very much I'm Steve Parks from convivio. Enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you very much